Semaglutide and exercise performance — VO2max and endurance data

CarlaRPh_TPA said:

The mechanism that matters here is not stomach emptying, it is central.

Pushing back on CarlaRPh_TPA here. The trial means are being read too generously in this thread. STEP populations were selected, supported, and titrated by protocol, and the real-world curves are consistently a few points worse. That difference is not noise, it is what happens when you remove the study infrastructure.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and subcutaneous bioavailability near 89%. Those four numbers explain most of the questions people ask about timing.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

PeptideChemSF said:

The trial means are being read too generously in this thread.

Coming at PeptideChemSF’s question from a different direction. The dose-response is real but shallow at the top. Across STEP 1 and STEP 4 the gap between 1.7mg and 2.4mg is a couple of percentage points of body weight on average, and the average is carrying a wide spread — plenty of people at 1.7mg sit above the 2.4mg mean. If a dose is working and tolerable, "working" is the relevant variable, not "maximal".

Following on from mike.trainer_LA — and this may be the naive question:

Whether anyone has held at a sub-maximal dose long term and kept the result, or whether the maintenance data only exists at 2.4mg?

Reporting back.

Update since I posted: I held at 1.7mg for a further twelve weeks and lost another 4kg slowly, which settles it for me. I was escalating because the number was available, not because I had stopped responding.